Learn the basic concepts and approaches needed to understand, create, and perform contemporary music.
If you have a passion for music and are curious about how it works, or if you are a musician who learned to play by ear without formal study, this course will provide you with an engaging introduction to key concepts and approaches needed to understand, create, and perform contemporary music. Taught by Berklee College of Music professor George W. Russell, Jr., the course includes six lessons that delve into harmony and ear training—two areas of intensive focus for every entering Berklee student.
The course will teach you the major scale and minor pentatonic scale, and how they are constructed. You will learn what intervals are, how to sing them, and how to find them in music. The course explores tonal centers and how to find the key a song is in, in addition to common time signatures such as 4/4 and 3/4. You will learn how to build chords—major and minor triads, and major and dominant seventh chords—and how to build a common chord progression—the I IV V. You will also learn how to recognize the blues and AABA song forms, and write a basic chord sheet to express your song ideas.
In addition to the video lectures, each lesson features Berklee student performances and interviews. The students share their musical journey and offer advice for those wanting to study music. The course culminates with an assignment that asks you to compose and perform a riff blues tune using the minor pentatonic scale. Above all, the course is designed to share the joy of creating music and sharing it with others.
Samy Elgazzar, a graduate of Berklee College of Music and a successful composer, will be your Teaching Assistant (TA) for the course.

Unterrichtet von

George W. Russell, Jr.

Skript

I was born into music. My parents are both art teachers, but they sing barbershop for fun. My dad was directing a woman's barbershop chorus then my mom joined when she moved into town. So that was kind of the environment that I grew up around. All the a capella singing and rehearsals, and having rehearsals take place in my house, that's where it all started then kind of moved from there. My dad, he's been in a band with a lot of my uncles, Sevana Reggae Band, not very original but hey, and they used to play a lot in different gigs and stuff. We also used to go there when we're little. I used to be like, "Oh, this sounds so cool." They're called the United Survivors. I was like, "I want to band with a cool name like that." My dad threw me into piano lessons when I was about three, and wasn't really sure how I felt about it at that young age. But then I started getting involved with my synagogue and playing music for people's bar mitzvahs and for services, and the more feedback I got, it kind of helped me decide that music was something that I wanted to do, whether it was at a professional level, or something to make myself happy. So I'd say it started from a really, really young age, just from playing piano in synagogue. I started singing when I was five. I have my first memory of singing, walk right in, sit right down, Daddy let your hair hang down. I sang that to my father in the car. I remember I was five, and I just always sing around the house. I did musical theater, once we move to Connecticut, because there was a local children's theater group that toured New England. It was great. Every weekend we performed throughout New England and on school breaks, we'd stay for two or three days. So it was really great experience. I'm interested in a music since I was super young, and I just loved popular songs. I sing popular songs since I was five or six years old, even I didn't speak English and I sing English songs. I got interested in music because, honestly my mother took me for music lessons when I was four years old. It was a neighbor, and it was kind of like a communal music class, where all of my friends met up. So I ended up going for class every day, and it wasn't class. It was like a fun time to meet my friends, but my music teacher was one of those little bent old ladies, who'd start me from the very beginning, like the foundation, and I started to really get into it.